moving overseas

When I was at school the summer holiday stretched out for six long weeks. Now that my kids are at school, I feel a bit duped. Their summer holidays stretch (drag?) on for eight whole weeks. Eight weeks, which is the equivalent to 56 days (or 1344 hours, but who’s counting?!). That’s a long time […]

Just when everything starts to feel right, everything changes again. Sound familiar? Yep, another move is on the cards. This was not in the plan. The *plan* was to do 3-4 years in Bangkok and then move back to England. Well, that plan didn’t happen. I worried about a lot of things before we moved […]

When we moved the first time the word ‘expat’ was new to me. I didn’t even think about whether there would be expat resources available. I read one book – from the relocation company – about all the reasons expat assignments fail. Basically it’s because of the TRAILING SPOUSE…yep, another term I wasn’t really familiar […]

It’s that time of year again when our heterogenous expat community can be grouped into two distinct tribes: the leavers and the stayers. And for those moving on, it’s a busy, emotional and often stressful time. This year, I am happy to report that I am a stayer. But the downside of that is having to say […]

A big part of any relocation is getting settled in your new expat house. But often this means a furnished flat, full of things you haven’t chosen. Or a house where none of the things you have shipped seem to quite work. So what can you do to make your expat house feel like home? And how […]

When you’re an expat you can gain a lot (and not just the ‘bread and wine’ pounds I have found here in Germany) but also miss out on a lot. I have missed big birthday celebrations, family weekends away, school reunions (phew!), hen weekends, weddings and the arrival of babies. I don’t like missing out. So I […]

I have lived away from home for four years now. Which in some ways is not that long really – equivalent to the length of time it took to do my degree (which included a year in France, not a repeat year…). However, when I think back to boarding the plane to Bangkok back in February 2013, what […]

There are always challenges when you move to a new country. And it’s easy to see all the things that are difficult. Or those that just get right on your nerves. So this post is the antithesis to all of that. This post is dedicated to the things I LOVE about living in Germany. Springtime in […]

Moving schools is always hard. Moving schools mid-year is even harder. We moved our daughter half way through a term when we moved to Bangkok. My advice based on this? Avoid it if you can. And in an ideal world, we would avoid it. Every move would be timed to coincide with the start of […]

I was thinking a lot about being an ‘expat wife’, and then I came a cross an article which talked about how Frida Kahlo was described as the ‘Wife of Master Mural Painter’. The point of the article was that if someone as legendary as Kahlo was described in terms of being ‘someone’s wife’, and yet […]